Thursday, 21 April 2016

My inspiration for Sunset City by Melissa Ginsburg

Today’s guest blog is by
Melissa Ginsburg who is a published poet and currently teaches creative writing
at the University of Mississippi. She talks about what inspired her to write
Sunset City.

As a writer of short,
non-narrative lyric poetry, I wanted to see if I could write a novel. I have
always read novels and loved crime novels especially. Borrowing the tropes and
structure of noir appealed to me, because I thought it would be helpful to work
within some kind of frame as I taught myself how to write fiction.

I thought of noir as a
form, like a sonnet or a villanelle. It allowed me to keep the elements of the
novel upright. I knew if I tried to write a novel without some kind of frame in
mind, I would end up with a rambling, jumble of images and character sketches.
I wanted to write something tight, that moved fast, where every line is in
service to that momentum.I have a
tendency to focus on moments, images, characters, and places. I knew plot would
be the hardest thing for me, because I had never dealt with it before. Having a
sense of the book’s shape really helped me to keep moving everything forward.

The other elements of the
novel—characters, setting, tone—came much more easily to me. I wanted to write
about women, and I wanted to write about Houston, which I think is a perfect
place for noir. It’s enormous, home to 6.5 million people, and it sprawls over
a huge amount of land. There is plenty of space in between everything, and it’s
easy to be anonymous there. Most people stay in their air-conditioned cars, and
there aren’t a lot of public spaces, so it’s unlikely that you would run into
anyone unless it was intentional. It’s an easy place to hide, to stay under the
radar. It’s perfect for crimes!

When I moved from Houston
to Iowa City, a small mid-western college town, losing that anonymity and
privacy was the most difficult cultural adjustment for me. It was even harder
than the mid-western winters. I was in Iowa City when I began writing Sunset City. I felt homesick for Texas, even
though when I lived there I couldn’t wait to leave. That ambivalence towards
home interested me as a writer. It mirrors the conflicted relationships many of
the book’s characters have with one another. The experience of deeply loving a
place or a person you don’t want to be around, that is an emotional situation
that I think is common to a lot of people and incredibly poignant.

Sunset City by Melissa Ginsburg (£12.99 Faber & Faber) Out now.

Danielle Reeves was
Charlotte Ford’s most loyal and vibrant friend.She helped Charlotte through her mother’s illness and death, and opened
up about her own troubled family.The
two friends were inseparable, reveling in Houston s shadowy corners. But
Danielle s addiction got the best of her and she went to prison for four years.When she gets out, she and Charlotte reconnect.
Charlotte hopes this is a new start for their friendship.Then a detective shows up at Charlotte s
apartment. Danielle has been murdered, bludgeoned to death.Overwhelmed by grief, Charlotte is determined
to understand how the most alive person she has ever known could end up dead.
The deeper Charlotte descends into Danielle s dark world, the less she
understands. Was Danielle a hapless victim or master manipulator? Was she
really intent on starting over, or was it all an act? To find the truth, Charlotte
must keep her head clear and her guard up. Houston has a way of feeding on bad
habits, and Charlotte doesn’t want to get swallowed whole.